force and fragrance; this is the color of the best people, these are the movers of movers, this is the salt of the salt of the earth"*.

Thus, by the end of his literary activity, Chernyshevsky, despite his negative attitude toward Russian society and his distrust of the activity of the popular masses, began to admit the possibility of a broad revolutionary movement, provoked by the peasantry's disillusionment with the reform of 1861. On the other hand, he could ascertain the presence of new people, revolutionaries from the intelligentsia, ready to place themselves at the head of the people in their struggle against the kingdom of exploitation and oppression...

By what path, then, should the revolutionary movement in Russia have gone from the standpoint of Chernyshevsky?

Above (in Chapter VI) we saw that in his general political views Chernyshevsky stood close to Blanquism—not to Blanquism in the sense which this word subsequently acquired and continues to be used in colloquial speech*, but rather in the sense in which Marx understood it when he recognized the Blanquists as the true representatives of the revolutionary proletariat... The Blanquists held the point of view that a minority is strong only insofar as it correctly expresses, if not the strivings, then at least the interests of the laboring majority.

Chernyshevsky, it appears, stood on this same point of view—the only one possible for epochs characterized by the passivity of the popular masses. He definitely emphasized that without the participation of the popular masses it is impossible to achieve serious practical results; he said that only the sympathy of the broad masses is capable of ensuring the success of this or that political program, and that without arousing enthusiasm in the masses, revolutionary

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* An example of such superficial understanding of Blanquism is Mr. Nikolayev's argument about Chernyshevsky's political views. Having recounted his conversation with Chernyshevsky in prison, during which Nikolai Gavrilovich expressed the thought that it would have been far better if the openly serf-holding party of the nobility had won during the peasant reform and the peasants had been emancipated without land, for then catastrophe would have occurred immediately, Mr. Nikolayev concludes: "Here, you see, is pure Blanquism: the worse the better (!). This doesn't at all resemble the later theories of our homegrown Marxists (to whom, by the way, the Messrs. Nikolayevs at one time actually attributed the principle 'the worse the better' and whom these gentlemen actually accused of sympathy toward the dispossession of the peasantry. - Yu. S.). Not evolution, not gradual emancipation of the peasants from the means of production, not the peasant's slow boiling in the factory cauldron, not his gradual transformation into a farmhand, but complete and immediately accomplished dispossession. Not evolution, toward which, I repeat, N. G. treated with indignation (?), but catastrophe. Not Marxism, but Blanquism" ("Personal Recollections", pp. 21-22). - One must say, what a splendid understanding of Chernyshevsky's views one can obtain from such a tirade!

* It is supposed that in the person of Rakhmetov, Chernyshevsky depicted a certain Bakhmetiev, who in Herzen's work ("The Common Fund." A Collection of Posthumous Articles, Geneva, 1874, pp. 181 ff.) is portrayed quite differently. Herzen met him in London in 1858: approximately at this time, Rakhmetov in Chernyshevsky's novel departs abroad. In our author's work, Rakhmetov abroad comes to Feuerbach in order to offer him money for the publication of his works (incidentally, this once again shows how highly Chernyshevsky esteemed Feuerbach, "the greatest of European thinkers of the nineteenth century, the father of new philosophy." "What is to be Done?", l. c., 194); Bakhmetiev, however, came to London to Herzen in order to offer him part of his capital for the cause of Russian propaganda.

Here is how Herzen describes Bakhmetiev:

"A young man with the appearance of a cadet, shy, very cheerless and with a peculiar aspect, rather crudely finished, of the type of seventh or eighth sons of steppe landowners. Very taciturn, he was almost entirely silent; it was evident that something was weighing on his soul, but he had not reached the point of being able to express anything. I left, having invited him to dinner in a couple of days or so. Before that I met him on the street. 'May I walk with you?' he asked. 'Of course, I'm not in danger from you, but you from me. But London is vast.' 'I'm not afraid,' and then suddenly, biting the bullet, he spoke rapidly: 'I shall never return to Russia, no, no, I absolutely shall not return to Russia...' 'But my dear fellow, you are so young.' 'I love Russia, I love it dearly; but the people there... I cannot live there. I want to establish a colony on entirely social principles; I have thought it all through and now I am going directly there.' 'That is, where?' 'To the Marquesas Islands.'

Of the 50,000 francs that he had, Bakhmetiev took 30,000 with him to the Marquesas Islands, tying them in a kerchief 'the way one ties up a pound of gooseberries or nuts,' and left 20,000 to Herzen for the cause of propaganda: this was the 'common fund,' which subsequently provoked so much discord among Russian emigration. The subsequent fate of Bakhmetiev is completely unknown; he disappeared without a trace. In Herzen's depiction he turns out to be some sort of unstrung, almost half-witted eccentric, bearing very little resemblance to the formidable and severe figure of Rakhmetov. But then again, one must say: Herzen was organically incapable of understanding Russian revolutionaries of that time; on this basis arose all those misunderstandings which poisoned the last days of his life. If Herzen could so badly misunderstand the writers Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, what is surprising if he completely failed to understand the angular and severe representative of revolutionary youth? But on the other hand, one of two other suppositions is very possible: either Bakhmetiev did not serve as a prototype for Rakhmetov at all, or Chernyshevsky greatly idealized him, creating an image having nothing in common with the original, or combining in it features from the character of Dobrolyubov (stern sense of civic duty), Bakunin (journey through Slavic lands, cf. also Kelsiyev), Serakovskii (rapprochement with all classes), etc."